CintaNotes Forum

[Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

[Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2016 12:34 pm

by CintaNotes Developer

Hi all,

Here's a new beta of the minor 3.1.2 release. The version 3.2 with autotagging rules is still in the works, but we've collected many fixes and enhancements,and considered it to be a good idea to publish them separately.Huge thanks for taking a look and for your comments!

Jan 29, 2015 - Version 3.1.2 Beta1

In this version:

Enhancements:

Focus top note during the search The focus stops jumping around. But the focus stays when you cancel the filter altogether.

Simplenote sync: don't run sync on startup if last sync was recent enough

Editor: improve Esc key handling Esc now cancels by default. Old behavior still available via the "editor.escsavenote" settings file parameter.

Fixes:

Export and Print: Field lists need to hide the "&" sign

Editor: wrong double-click word selection behavior

Incorrect error message when trying to open a corrupted notebook

Controls were being cut off at 120 DPI

Error when creating a notebook while an attachment is opened for editing

The message should read "The note changes have not been saved yet. Discard Changes?", right? (have not has)Also i was quite confused of the absence of a "Cancel" button. The user can not be sure what happens, when he presses 'No'. Will the changes be discarded and the editor closed? Well, luckily not. The button does what "Cancel" should do. I suggest to follow standards using Yes/No/Cancel buttons.

Another aspect is, that for existing users the action reverts. This is reasonable to newbies. However i suggest to either keep the old behaviour for old databases or add an option to the UI. Editing the settings file is rather unsatisfying in that situation.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Export and Print: Field lists need to hide the "&" sign

A suggestion related to the Dialog to allow to select the fields for Export and Print.

A) The window size is that small, it requires scroll bars Please make the windows reasonable in size.B) Please add a switch to Select All / Unselect All fields. I have a need for this, when i print a list with title only.

Thanks a lot.

Thomas

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 9:28 am

by date

CintaNotes Developer wrote: [*]Focus top note during the search The focus stops jumping around. But the focus stays when you cancel the filter altogether.

I think I like the old behavior better... Using 'go back' loses the note too. But saving a note and changing tags keep it, so I might get used to it.

[*]Editor: improve Esc key handling Esc now cancels by default. Old behavior still available via the "editor.escsavenote" settings file parameter.[/list]

But I can only choose 'yes'? To cancel... I think Esc should be about closing not about discarding, like this one below .

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 10:23 am

by usbpoweredfridge

Thomas Lohrum wrote:The message should read "The note changes have not been saved yet. Discard Changes?", right? (have not has)

Correct, the current message is not grammatically correct. As you say, 'has' should be 'have'.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Also i was quite confused of the absence of a "Cancel" button. The user can not be sure what happens, when he presses 'No'. Will the changes be discarded and the editor closed? Well, luckily not. The button does what "Cancel" should do. I suggest to follow standards using Yes/No/Cancel buttons.

Tricky one - I understood it perfectly (and the 'no ' button behaves logically IMHO), but what buttons should be available depend on the precise phrase inside the dialog box. If we change to Yes/No/Cancel (we don't need three buttons, only two I think - three are too many), the wording inside the dialog will have to change, as currently, Yes/No/Cancel would not make sense with the existing wording.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Another aspect is, that for existing users the action reverts. This is reasonable to newbies. However i suggest to either keep the old behaviour for old databases or add an option to the UI. Editing the settings file is rather unsatisfying in that situation.

I was the one who asked for this change, so I am happy as it is - but I didn't intend it to apply to current users, so I would be equally happy if the behaviour was flipped around (ie disabled by default). As I said in the original request thread, I would have been happy with an .ini file setting for this that I could toggle on, with the old behaviour remaining the default (even if I disagree with a default setting, from a user perspective, once an option has been set as the default, I'm not a huge fan of changing it, in the interests of keeping the user experience consistent).

Chris

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 10:27 am

by usbpoweredfridge

date wrote:But I can only choose 'yes'? To cancel... I think Esc should be about closing not about discarding, like this one below .

Apart from the minor grammatical error in the text, I think it is logical and understandable as is (maybe I don't have any trouble with it because I am a native English speaker?), but as I responded to Thomas above, we don't need three buttons - only two. Once to cancel the note, one to keep it. That's it.

But if we change the wording on the buttons, we will have to change the wording of the message as well (again as I responded to Thomas above).

The image that is meant to be attached to that article - showing the message text being referred to - is currently missing in action it appears. The general idea of the text should be apparent though, even without the image.

Chris

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 7:59 pm

by date

usbpoweredfridge wrote:

date wrote:But I can only choose 'yes'? To cancel... I think Esc should be about closing not about discarding, like this one below .

Apart from the minor grammatical error in the text, I think it is logical and understandable as is (maybe I don't have any trouble with it because I am a native English speaker?), but as I responded to Thomas above, we don't need three buttons - only two. Once to cancel the note, one to keep it. That's it.

It's logical if your intent was to delete or cancel something, not when closing something (and inadvertendly having made some changes that maybe hadn't been saved.) (Compare to closing a changed MS notepad or paint file, vs. deleting a file.)But it's true the other way around (discarding assumed) is used in for example tabbed option dialogs where it is expected you have to explicitly press 'save' for changes to occur.

As a sidenote it occurred to me I didn't notice the typo, but I noticed the X on top was grayed out. Probably many dialogs are only read subconsciously by some people (or partly or not at all), apparently including myself.

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2016 1:21 am

by usbpoweredfridge

date wrote:As a sidenote it occurred to me I didn't notice the typo, but I noticed the X on top was grayed out. Probably many dialogs are only read subconsciously by some people (or partly or not at all), apparently including myself.

Ah, I hadn't noticed the greyed out x on the dialog until you pointed it out. It's a bit superfluous - I wonder if it can be removed, or if dialogs in Windows have to have an x regardless of whether it is used or not?

By the way - has anyone else noticed CN getting slower and slower to start over the last few updates? First start is between 5-10 seconds on my system now.

Chris

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2016 11:23 am

by Thomas Lohrum

Hi,

the discussion revealed what caused the confusion to me. Usually the dialog ask's whether to save the changes or not, thus my suggestion to Yes/No/Cancel. Being asked to discard changes is like "do you not want to save changes?" to me.

Thomas

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2016 9:43 pm

by date

usbpoweredfridge wrote:Ah, I hadn't noticed the greyed out x on the dialog until you pointed it out. It's a bit superfluous - I wonder if it can be removed, or if dialogs in Windows have to have an x regardless of whether it is used or not?

I thought X was equivalent to cancel. So if you can't cancel, the X can be greyed out, something like that. (But any dialog *can* be anything however the programmer likes or be transformed into a monologue )Also I meant to say someone should be able to make a decision on which button to press without or with minimum reading, which I realized after I realized I missed the typo. Coincidentally, in the link to the article you provided, there was a link in one of the comments to another (somewhat dated) article which was just about that -- it was an interesting read.

By the way - has anyone else noticed CN getting slower and slower to start over the last few updates? First start is between 5-10 seconds on my system now.

I only noticed sorting on date/time is much faster to operate on than when sorting on title or size. Startup is nearly instant here.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:the discussion revealed what caused the confusion to me. Usually the dialog ask's whether to save the changes or not, thus my suggestion to Yes/No/Cancel. Being asked to discard changes is like "do you not want to save changes?" to me.

Yes as if you meant to delete - this dialog seems a more appropriate fit for the 'cancel' button: 'sure to cancel?'

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 4:02 pm

by CintaNotes Developer

Hi guys,Thanks a lot to all for taking a look and for the comments and suggestions!I'm a bit in a rush now, sorry for that, but tomorrow I'll be able to reply more thoroughly. I'm sure that we'll come up with a solution to the questions raised above.

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 11:43 am

by CintaNotes Developer

Ok, sorry for the delay:) Now I can reply

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Please consider to apply the action to the following keystrokes as well:Ctrl+BkSpCtrl+DelCtrl+A (Select All) + BkSpCtrl+A (Select All) + DelThe same is true when i click on the X symbol in the search field.

Ok, will do that. The only exception is the X symbol, which is essentially the same as Esc, so I consider it wrong to have Esc and X do different things.

Another issue i encountered is that the focus remains on the note, that CintaNotes considers a match. I think it makes more sense to not only scroll to top, but to focus the top note as well.

Don't quite get what you mean here, sorry. When I'm in the search box and I press Tab or Down, I go directly to the top note, which means that top note has the focus.

The message should read "The note changes have not been saved yet. Discard Changes?", right? (have not has)

That's a typo, I'll fix it, thanks!

Also i was quite confused of the absence of a "Cancel" button. The user can not be sure what happens, when he presses 'No'. Will the changes be discarded and the editor closed? Well, luckily not. The button does what "Cancel" should do. I suggest to follow standards using Yes/No/Cancel buttons.

Probably you're right and the question should be phrased differently, and this would eliminate the need to add another button."The note changes have not been saved yet. Save changes? [Yes/No]"

Another aspect is, that for existing users the action reverts. This is reasonable to newbies. However i suggest to either keep the old behaviour for old databases or add an option to the UI. Editing the settings file is rather unsatisfying in that situation.

I agree that this option should be in the UI. About old vs newbie users - I'm afraid I don't agree we should treat them differently.Even if some old users are used to Esc as "save and close", the message box should prevent them from losing data anyway, and the option in the UI will enable them to switch back to the old way.

A suggestion related to the Dialog to allow to select the fields for Export and Print.A) The window size is that small, it requires scroll bars Please make the windows reasonable in size.B) Please add a switch to Select All / Unselect All fields. I have a need for this, when i print a list with title only.

Will do, no problem. Only the "(de)select all" checkbox maybe not in this release - will require a bit more time for that. Thanks for the suggestion!

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 11:47 am

by CintaNotes Developer

Hi date,

I think I like the old behavior better... Using 'go back' loses the note too. But saving a note and changing tags keep it, so I might get used to it.

Could you please elaborate about the "go back" losing the note? I'd need an example which used to work before, but now doesn't.

But I can only choose 'yes'? To cancel... I think Esc should be about closing not about discarding, like this one below .

Please see my suggestion above about re-phrasing the question in the message box.

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 11:50 am

by CintaNotes Developer

Hi Chris,

Tricky one - I understood it perfectly (and the 'no ' button behaves logically IMHO), but what buttons should be available depend on the precise phrase inside the dialog box. If we change to Yes/No/Cancel (we don't need three buttons, only two I think - three are too many), the wording inside the dialog will have to change, as currently, Yes/No/Cancel would not make sense with the existing wording.

What do you think about changing the question from "discard?" to "save?"

I was the one who asked for this change, so I am happy as it is - but I didn't intend it to apply to current users, so I would be equally happy if the behaviour was flipped around (ie disabled by default). As I said in the original request thread, I would have been happy with an .ini file setting for this that I could toggle on, with the old behaviour remaining the default (even if I disagree with a default setting, from a user perspective, once an option has been set as the default, I'm not a huge fan of changing it, in the interests of keeping the user experience consistent).

Esc that saves changes is a non-standard thing, this is why I think that changing the default behavior is justified here.As already said, old users should have no problem activating an option in the menu.

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:07 pm

by CintaNotes Developer

usbpoweredfridge wrote:By the way - has anyone else noticed CN getting slower and slower to start over the last few updates? First start is between 5-10 seconds on my system now.

Interesting. Do you have some antivirus software active? Maybe it's checking CN upon startup?

date wrote:I thought X was equivalent to cancel. So if you can't cancel, the X can be greyed out, something like that. (But any dialog *can* be anything however the programmer likes or be transformed into a monologue )

That's exactly the case - since this is a Yes/No message box, it has no Cancel and thus no X button is available. But we could make X behave like Cancel without actually adding the cancel button per se, and pressing Esc two times will be a no-op. However I'm not sure this would be user-friendly.

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 4:08 pm

by date

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Hi date,

I think I like the old behavior better... Using 'go back' loses the note too. But saving a note and changing tags keep it, so I might get used to it.

Could you please elaborate about the "go back" losing the note? I'd need an example which used to work before, but now doesn't.

This is not something that (always) worked before... pressing back sometimes highlights the note where you were before, and sometimes a seemingly random note. But to press forward always worked, but not in this beta because it scrolls to top.

But when starting a new search, I found that scrolling to top can actually be helpful, if you are already in the right tag. The cases where I'd like to keep the note highlighted still behave the same... so on second look scrolling to top might be an improvement without the adverse effects I thought there would be.

That's exactly the case - since this is a Yes/No message box, it has no Cancel and thus no X button is available. But we could make X behave like Cancel without actually adding the cancel button per se, and pressing Esc two times will be a no-op. However I'm not sure this would be user-friendly.

In that case X usually means No? But I've never seen it as a substitute, only as an (keyboard-friendly) alternative to the non-default No or Cancel button that's already there. See for example what happens when you delete a file in explorer, you can press Esc for No.

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:45 pm

by Thomas Lohrum

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Thomas Lohrum wrote:The same is true when i click on the X symbol in the search field.

Ok, will do that. The only exception is the X symbol, which is essentially the same as Esc, so I consider it wrong to have Esc and X do different things.

Well, this is true only when you have ESC configured as multi-reset. Since i have this option turned off using an ini-setting, to me clicking [X] is the same as pressing Ctrl+A and Del.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Another issue i encountered is that the focus remains on the note, that CintaNotes considers a match. I think it makes more sense to not only scroll to top, but to focus the top note as well.

Don't quite get what you mean here, sorry. When I'm in the search box and I press Tab or Down, I go directly to the top note, which means that top note has the focus.

As others have reported in this thread there might be a minor issue with following the recent note. Could be, that this is what i have observed, also. I'll keep an eye on it.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Also i was quite confused of the absence of a "Cancel" button. The user can not be sure what happens, when he presses 'No'. Will the changes be discarded and the editor closed? Well, luckily not. The button does what "Cancel" should do. I suggest to follow standards using Yes/No/Cancel buttons.

Probably you're right and the question should be phrased differently, and this would eliminate the need to add another button."The note changes have not been saved yet. Save changes? [Yes/No]"

Yes, let's do it this way. Much better.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:(...)and the option in the UI will enable them to switch back to the old way.

Since you agreed to offer an UI setting, that's fine with me.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Will do, no problem. Only the "(de)select all" checkbox maybe not in this release - will require a bit more time for that.

Ok, thanks a lot.

Thomas

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:05 am

by usbpoweredfridge

CintaNotes Developer wrote:What do you think about changing the question from "discard?" to "save?"

Esc that saves changes is a non-standard thing, this is why I think that changing the default behavior is justified here.As already said, old users should have no problem activating an option in the menu.

Ok, fair enough - I'm happy with that.

Chris

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:08 am

by usbpoweredfridge

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Interesting. Do you have some antivirus software active? Maybe it's checking CN upon startup?

Yes, I run ESET Smart Security. I have now excluded the CN .exe file from monitoring in ESET, and will see if it improves anything.

date wrote:IThat's exactly the case - since this is a Yes/No message box, it has no Cancel and thus no X button is available. But we could make X behave like Cancel without actually adding the cancel button per se, and pressing Esc two times will be a no-op. However I'm not sure this would be user-friendly.

Yes, that sounds too complicated. Keep it simple - just change the wording of the message on the current dialog box, and just have the Yes/No buttons, and leave everything else as it is.

Chris

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 1:15 am

by usbpoweredfridge

usbpoweredfridge wrote:Yes, I run ESET Smart Security. I have now excluded the CN .exe file from monitoring in ESET, and will see if it improves anything.

On the face of it, this has noticeably improved the situation!

Chris

Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.1.2 Beta 1

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 10:54 am

by CintaNotes Developer

date wrote:This is not something that (always) worked before... pressing back sometimes highlights the note where you were before, and sometimes a seemingly random note. But to press forward always worked, but not in this beta because it scrolls to top.

But the focused note is not the part of the history state, only the filters are. So that the previous note was selected was purely coincidental, probably simply because it was the first that matched the filters.

But when starting a new search, I found that scrolling to top can actually be helpful, if you are already in the right tag. The cases where I'd like to keep the note highlighted still behave the same... so on second look scrolling to top might be an improvement without the adverse effects I thought there would be.

Ok, great.

In that case X usually means No? But I've never seen it as a substitute, only as an (keyboard-friendly) alternative to the non-default No or Cancel button that's already there. See for example what happens when you delete a file in explorer, you can press Esc for No.

Probably it would still mean "cancel", and do something different than both buttons - namely, return you back to editing. However on second thought this is non-standard and probably should be avoided.